It's impossible to walk a block in Miami in Los Angeles San Antonio without running into someone who is being deeply impacted by a broken legal immigration system.

Diabetes is a disease that's had a deep impact on my family. My little brother has had type 1 diabetes since he was a baby and I have spent time learning about the disease and trying to bring attention to it so that one day soon we will reach a cure.

A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media which is our culture. Professors of humanities with all their leftist fantasies have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.

In my professional work with the Agency by the late '70s I had come to question the value of a great deal of what we were doing in terms of the intelligence agency's impact on American policy.

When a decision is made to go to war based on intelligence it is a fateful decision. It has ramifications and impacts way beyond the current months and years.

The only limit to your impact is your imagination and commitment.

Some major writers have a huge impact like Ayn Rand who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction but it really isn't fiction at all.

I'm thrilled to continue my partnership with U by Kotex for Generation Know while helping to empower girls. I've always been a motivational resource for my younger sisters and hope I can positively impact and inspire other young girls too.

But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.

Never in our country's history have we witnessed a natural disaster that has impacted so many people in such a wide area. In fact as of the writing of this column millions of people along the Gulf Coast have been displaced from their homes in a period of only five days.